Voldemort Killed Her Personally
by ESawyer1
Summary: "That's Dorcas Meadowes, Voldemort killed her personally..." It's been five months since Marlene died, and Dorcas is on another mission for the Order, and she's determined to see the war through to the bitter end.


Time really did put things into perspective. Four years ago to the day, Dorcas Meadowes had been panicking about the act that she hadn't done her Transfiguration homework after coming to the quite horrific realisation that Transfiguration was her next lesson. Both Marlene and Sirius had found the whole thing quite hilarious. But they found everything hilarious.

Now, Dorcas was stood outside an old country manor. Apparently, this was where a lot of the Death Eaters were hiding when they weren't being generally terrorising. Dorcas glanced up at the house, shivering in the moonlight. She would much rather take on an angry Death Eater than an angry Professor McGonagall. Anyone with half a brain would.

Although, when she saw a flash of green light in one of the windows, she was starting to think that maybe she would prefer to be in the presence of an angry Professor McGonagall. She glanced to her right side and saw the rough outline of Edgar Bones in the dim light. He was still crouched down in the bushes and did not look like he was going to be moving anytime soon. Dorcas sighed, it was going to be a long time.

There was another flash of green light and Dorcas looked down at her knees, thinking that she might go mad if she saw anymore green light. It did not stop her from thinking about what it would be like to one day die. That was maybe the cruelest thing about war; she was so often surrounded by death, that her own mortality was forever at the front of her mind.

It wasn't until Dorcas lived through the deaths of beloved friends and classmates that she fully understood how feeble life really was. It could be over before she even knew it was happening, and she had spent many sleepless nights hoping that her friends had not known it was happening when it did.

She thought about Marlene more often than anyone else. It had been five months and it had not gotten any easier. Dorcas' mum liked to remind her that grief was a perfectly normal thing to experience, but that did not make her feel any better. And it did not bring Marlene or anyone else for that matter, back from the death.

At night when Dorcas' mind would wander, she would slowly begin to unpack her grief in a desperate attempt to understand it. She didn't miss what she and Marlene had had together, because Dorcas had already had the privilege of spending that time with her. No, what Dorcas grieved for was the future that they would never have. They would miss out on Christmases, birthdays and anniversaries. They would miss out on drunken nights out and the following morning when they could do nothing but slowly eat their way through the entirety of their fridge. Sometimes they would be able to muster up enough energy to throw some sort of hangover cure together, or sometimes they would find the energy to floo Lily and ask her to do it instead.

Furious at herself for crying at such an inconvenient time, Dorcas wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. If Marlene knew that she was crying at such a time like this one, she'd probably poke her in the side and tell her to pull herself together.

Dorcas often thought that being dead would be easier. Being missed was easier than spending days missing someone else. Not that she would ever do something stupid. She intended to see this war to the bitter end, just as a massive 'fuck you,' to Lord Voldemort and all his Death Eaters.

Someone whistled in the distance and Dorcas looked over to Benjy Fenwick. He was waved at her and then pointed up at the house. She nodded and gripped her wand righter, ready to go in. On the other side of her, Edgar held up five fingers and slowly began to countdown. Dorcas' heart rate began to increase and she focused on her breathing whilst thinking about all the things she would do when she got home.

That was a coping mechanism that Marlene had come up with whilst they were at school and focusing on their OWLs.

_"If you think about all the nice things we'll be able to do once the day is over, getting through the day doesn't seem so hard," _

_"Yes, for example, I think about all the things that I'll be able to throw at Potter in the common room," Lily sighed wistfully. _

She wondered what Marlene had been thinking about the day it happened.

"Meadowes!" Edgar hissed at her, "Get moving!"

Dorcas jumped. She had been staring into space without realising it and Benjy and Edgar were already at the door, holding it open.

"Remember the plan?" Benjy whispered.

When they both nodded, he grinned at them and hurried into the house. Dorcas could never understand why he took so much joy out of Order missions. Edgar nodded curtly at Dorcas and then followed Benjy inside.

Thinking about the food she would get from The Leaky Cauldron when they finished up here, Dorcas quickly slipped inside the house and shut the door quietly behind her, bathing the hallway in darkness. Sticking close the shadows, Dorcas did her best to not jump at every noise and tried to keep her cursing as silent as possible whenever the floorboards creaked under feet. The chances were were that a Death Eater would not worry themselves with the sound of a creaking floorboard and she would probably be able to move around undetected. Though, this did not calm her anxiety.

She kept a very close watch on the time as she moved from door to door, carefully listening for any noises on the other side. They had agreed to say for half an hour, and they still had twenty minutes. If anything, this was just like trying to sneak back to the common room after curfew. Dorcas was quite sure that being trapped in a corridor between Filch and Peeves was scarier than being in a house that was possibly crawling with Death Eaters. What she really needed right now, was the Invisibility Cloak but sometimes asking James for the cloak very much felt like stealing candy from a baby. And she supposed that now they were in hiding, James and Lily needed the cloak more than ever before...

A door behind her opened, and Dorcas spun around, her wand drawn, but the cloaked Death Eater was walking away from her and did not seem to have noticed her. She almost backed away from them, but there was something oddly familiar about the way that they were walking. Curiosity getting the better of her, Dorcas crouched down low and hurried after the Death Eater, trying to pinpoint exactly what was so familiar about them.

They stopped quite suddenly at a door and Dorcas tripped over trying not bang into the back of them. She fell to the floor with a crash and the Death Eater spun around, their hood falling from their head. He squeaked in fear upon seeing her and Dorcas gasped.

"Peter?" She scrambled to her feet, unable to draw her wand because this was her _friend_, "what are you doing here?"

"Dorcas, I-"

The door behind Peter opened and another Death Eater, Rodolphus Lestrange, was silhouetted against the light from the room behind him. He looked down at Peter and then over to Dorcas, a smiling curling on his lips. Dorcas immediately drew her wand and there was a bang like a gunshot and Lestrange flew backwards into the room. There were more yells from inside and another figure appeared at the door - Lucius Malfoy.

"Stupe-"

Malfoy flicked his wand and the spell seemed to disintegrate into the air. Before she could even think about casting another spell, Lucius had flicked his wand again and her wand flew through the air and landed in his outstretched hand. Then a voice that sent shivers down her spine sounded throughout the room.

"Who is it, Lucius?"

"It's a member of the Order, My Lord," Lucius said, "Dorcas Meadowes,"

"Bring her in,"

Lucius leant forward and grabbed her arms, pulling her into the room. Dorcas looked around the room and could have screamed for their were many bodies littering the floor, some she even recognised and stood silhouetted against the fireplace was a tall, lean finger. Snake-like glowing red eyes burned into Dorcas as fear took over her body, but she wouldn't let it show. She held her head up high as she faced Lord Voldemort, perhaps already accepting her fate.

"Are there others here tonight?" He asked.

Dorcas ignored him and turned around to look at Peter, who was staring at the floor, "What are you doing here, Peter? Peter? Peter! Don't ignore me!"

"Trust is a valuable thing, when put in the correct person," Lord Voldemort said, "you have misplaced your trust with Wormtail,"

"He's not on - he's not on your side," Dorcas said, the very notion was ridiculous. He loved James, Sirius and Remus. He would never turn his back on them, "You're wrong, he wouldn't turn on his friends. He wouldn't turn on the Order!"

"Tell her, Wormtail, tell her where your loyalties lie," Voldemort said.

"My loyalties lie with the Dark Lord,"

"YOU FUCKER!" Dorcas screamed as tears spilled over her cheeks. She tried to get to him but Lucius held her back, "YOU ABSOLUTE TWAT! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS - AFTER ALL THAT TIME - YOU - YOU TURN YOUR BACK ON US? YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE _COWARD_ PETER PETTIGREW!"

Voldemort was laughing now and Dorcas wanted nothing more than to attack every single person in the room. Everyone there was responsible for so many deaths - the Prewett twins, Marlene and her entire family and countless others who had no place in the war but were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet, most of her anger was directed towards Peter. Peter who she had stayed up with after hours when he was struggling with his Charms homework, Peter who used to slip her pieces of Honeydukes chocolate when she became stressed in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Peter who, above all, was her friend.

"How could you do this, Peter?" Dorcas sobbed, "How could you do this to us? We were your friends! We were your friends! When Dumbledore hears about this-"

Voldemort laughed a high, cold laugh and Dorcas closed her eyes, realising her mistake. The moment she stepped foot in this room, she should have known there was no way out. This was it. This would be how she met her end, and maybe she was OK with it. Maybe it didn't bother her as much as she should have done.

"Dumbledore won't be hearing about anything," Voldemort laughed, "he won't be hearing about anything but your death,"

Dorcas nodded and opened her eyes, forcing herself to lock eyes with him.

"You better make it quick. I imagine you have a lot more killing to do before the sun is up,"

She yelped slightly as Lucius pushed her to the ground but very quickly got back up. If she was going to die, she was going to do it straight backed and staring her killer dead in the eye.

Voldemort stared at her for a moment, twirling his wand around in his fingers. Dorcas chanced a glance behind her. If she was quick enough, she might be able to grab her wand and fight her way out. Lucius seemed to know exactly what he was thinking because he smirked at her and then slid the wand into the inside of his robes.

This really was the end, then. She looked at Voldemort, the tears still streaming down her cheeks and then over at Peter. He still wasn't looking up at her and rage burned through her body.

"I can't believe it," she scoffed, "You can't even look at me. You can't even look at me one last time. You're a _coward_, Peter,"

She turned back to face Voldemort and cocked her head to the side as if to say, "Come on, then. We haven't got all day,".

The wand cracked through the air like a whip, and her duty was done.


End file.
